I don't think I've ever seen a market consolidate as fast the analytic platform market.
By definition, an analytic platform is an integrated hardware and software data management system geared to query processing and analytics that offers dramatically higher price-performance than general purpose systems. After talking with numerous customers of these systems, I am convinced they represent game-changing technology. As such, major database vendors have been tripping over themselves to gain the upper hand in this multi-billion dollar market.
Rapid Fire Acquisitions. Microsoft made the first move when it purchased Datallegro in July, 2008. But it's taken two years for Microsoft to port the technology to Windows and SQL Server so, ironically, it finds itself trailing the leaders. Last May, SAP acquired Sybase, largely for its mobile technology, but also for its Sybase IQ analytic platform, which has long been been the leading column-store database on the market and has done especially well in financial services. And SAP is sparking tremendous interest within its installed base for HANA, an in-memory appliance designed to accelerate query performance of SAP BW and other analytic applications.
Two months after SAP acquired Sybase, EMC snapped up massively parallel processing (MPP) database, Greenplum, and reportedly has done an excellent job executing new deals. Two months later, in September, 2010, IBM purchased the leading pureplay, Netezza, in an all cash deal worth $1.8 billion that could be a boon to Netezza if IBM can clearly differentiate between its multiple data warehousing offerings and execute well in the field.
And last month, Hewlett Packard, whose NeoView analytic platform died ingloriously last fall, scooped up Vertica, a market leading columnar database with many interesting scalability and availability features. And finally, Teradata this week announced it was purchasing AsterData, a MPP shared nothing database with rich SQL MapReduce functions that can perform deep analytics on both structured and unstructured data.
So, in the past nine months, the world's biggest high tech companies purchased five of the leading, pureplay analytic platforms. This rapid pace of consolidation is dizzying!
Consolidation Drivers
Fear and Loathing. Part of this consolidation frenzy is driven by fear. Namely, fear of being left out of the market. And perhaps fear of Oracle, whose own analytic platform, Exadata, has gathered significant market momentum, knocking unsuspecting rivals on their heels. Although pricey, Exadata not only fuels game-changing analytic performance, it now also supports transaction applications--a one-stop database engine that competitors may have difficulty derailing (unless Oracle shoots itself in the foot with uncompromising terms for licensing, maintenance, and proofs of concept.)
Core Competencies. These analytic platform vendors are now carving out market niches where they can outshine the rest. For Oracle, it's a high-performance, hybrid analytic/transaction system; SAP touts its in-memory acceleration (HANA) and a mature columnar database that supports real-time analytics and complex event processing; EMC Greenplum targets complex analytics against petabytes of data; Aster Data focuses on analytic applications in which SQL MapReduce is an advantage; Teradata touts its mixed workload management capabilities and workload-specific analytic appliances; IBM Netezza focuses on simplicity, fast deployments, and quick ROI; Vertica trumpets its scalability, reliability, and availability now that other vendors have added columnar storage and processing capabilities; Microsoft is pitching is PDW along with a series of data mart appliances and a BI appliance.
Pureplays Looking for Cover. The rush of acquisitions leaves a number of viable pureplays out in the cold. Without a big partner, these vendors will need to clearly articulate their positioning and work hard to gain beachheads within customer accounts. ParAccel, for example, is eyeing Fortune 100 companies with complex analytic requirements, targeting financial services where it says Sybase IQ is easy pickings. Dataupia is seeking cover in companies that have tens to hundreds of petabytes to query and store. Kognitio likes its chances with flexible cloud-based offerings that customers can bring inhouse if desired. InfoBright is targeting the open source MySQL market, while Sand Technology touts its columnar compression, data mart synchronization, and text parsing capabilities. Ingres is pursuing the open source data warehousing market, and its new Vectorwise technology makes it a formidable in-memory analytics processing platform.
Despite the rapid consolidation of the analytic platforms market, there is still obviously lots of choice left for customers eager to cash in on the benefits of purpose-built analytical machines that deliver dramatically higher price-performance than database management systems of the past. Although the action was fast and furious in 2010, the race has only just begun. So, fasten your seat belts as players jockey for position in the sprint to the finish.
Posted March 8, 2011 8:20 AM
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